Deception has been a ploy as long as time has been account for as what may use as an explanation of what they are unable to fully understand, or what may be deemed as inexplicable. It is to been believed by many of past, present and most likely our distant future, there are indeed powers, beings, at work that we can not understand. In Apuleius’ “The Golden Ass”, these deceptions, play an important role in the lives of these societies, in their everyday lives. There is one common thread in the stories shared with in “The Golden Ass”, where the practice of deception, which was referred to as magic and/or witchcraft, which seems points the finger a one member of the society, women, and their sexuality and desirable nature. Through each century men have always attempted to explain “women” and their effects on them, believing in this time, that it was indeed the work of dark powers and beliefs that women held. This “accusation” was able to allow men to be scapegoats to whatever actions and behaviors they displayed, and was able to pass the blame to someone else, the women and their witchcraft. Of course this meant that no man would be held responsible for adultery, because according to the society, he was under the woman he laid with spell, and under in influence and it was beyond his control. There was a safety to anyone to believed this to be true, rather than believing that a man would have acted on his own manner, and could not control his own desires.
In “The Golden Ass”, there are many stories presented will distinct similar tales involving women and their magic, their witchcraft. These women were never unattractive, and at the least they were considered “not at all bad-looking”, and are considered “really in heat”. These w...
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... trickery that seem to overcome and paralyze the men in the “Golden Ass”. Pamphile is labeled as such, as a witch, from the beginning of this encounter, and he testifies to trying to avoid her sexual advances and her enticing nature. Pamphile is now seen to attempt to capture the interest of the narrator, saying that “the moment she sees a handsome young man, she becomes possessed by his charms and has no eyes or thoughts for anything else” and “anyone who won’t cooperate, or gets writtens off for not fancying her, she instantly turns them into a rock or a sheep or some other animal, and some she simply eliminates”. Lucius, like the narrator, is given this warning as well, to stay away from Pamphine. In reality Pamphile is considered to be an independent, sexually driven and confident woman, which forces man to really look at himself, and his own powers over women.
The book begins with a brief history of the colonial witchcraft. Each Chapter is structured with an orientation, presentation of evidence, and her conclusion. A good example of her structure is in chapter two on the demographics of witchcraft; here she summarizes the importance of age and marital status in witchcraft accusations. Following this she provides a good transition into chapter three in the final sentence of chapter two, “A closer look of the material conditions and behavior of acc...
The Golden Ass a novel written by Apuleius takes place during the Roman Empire. Throughout this story we meet a variety of characters who can be used to represent the Roman Empire. Specifically I 'll be looking a Pamphile the witch, Lucius and the boy who owns Lucius the ass. As I stated earlier they each have distinct characteristics which can be seen as staples of people during the Roman Empire.
The witch hunts in early modern Europe were extensive and far reaching. Christina Larner, a sociology professor at the University of Glasgow and an influential witchcraft historian provides valuable insight into the witch trials in early modern Europe in her article 'Was Witch-Hunting Woman-Hunting?'. Larner writes that witchcraft was not sex-specific, although it was sex-related (Larner, 2002). It cannot be denied that gender plays a tremendous role in the witch hunts in early modern Europe, with females accounting for an estimated 80 percent of those accused (Larner, 2002). However, it would be negligent to pay no heed to the remaining 20 percent, representing alleged male witches (Larner, 2002). The legal definition of a witch in this time, encompassed both females and males (Levack, 1987). This essay will explore the various fundamental reasons for this gender discrepancy and highlight particular cases of witchcraft allegations against both women and men. These reasons arise from several fundamental pieces of literature that depict the stereotypical witch as female. These works are misogynistic and display women as morally inferior to men and highly vulnerable to temptations from demons (Levack, 1987). This idea is blatantly outlined in the text of the 'Malleus Maleficarum' written by James Sprenger and Henry Kramer in the late fifteenth century. This book is used as the basis for many of the witch trials in early modern Europe (Levack, 1987). The text describes women as sexually submissive creatures and while remarking that all witchcraft is derived from intense sexual lust, a women is thus a prime candidate for witchcraft (Sprenger & Kramer, 1487). In this time period, men are seen as powerful and in control and thus rarely...
This paper will discuss the well published work of, Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Schocken, 1975. Print. Sarah B. Pomerory uses this book to educate others about the role women have played throughout ancient history. Pomerory uses a timeline to go through each role, starting with mythological women, who were called Goddesses. She then talks about some common roles, the whores, wives, and slaves during this time. Pomerory enlightens the audience on the topic of women, who were seen as nothing at the time. Men were seen as the only crucial part in history; however, Pomerory’s focus on women portrays the era in a new light.
Over the course of time, the roles of men and women have changed dramatically. As women have increasingly gained more social recognition, they have also earned more significant roles in society. This change is clearly reflected in many works of literature, one of the most representative of which is Plautus's 191 B.C. drama Pseudolus, in which we meet the prostitute Phoenicium. Although the motivation behind nearly every action in the play, she is glimpsed only briefly, never speaks directly, and earns little respect from the male characters surrounding her, a situation that roughly parallels a woman's role in Roman society of that period. Women of the time, in other words, were to be seen and not heard. Their sole purpose was to please or to benefit men. As time passed, though, women earned more responsibility, allowing them to become stronger and hold more influence. The women who inspired Lope de Vega's early seventeenth-century drama Fuente Ovejuna, for instance, rose up against not only the male officials of their tiny village, but the cruel (male) dictator busy oppressing so much of Spain as a whole. The roles women play in literature have evolved correspondingly, and, by comparing The Epic of Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Wife of Bath's Prologue, we can see that fictional women have just as increasingly as their real-word counterparts used gender differences as weapons against men.
The term witchcraft is defines as the practice of magic intended to influence nature. It is believed that only people associated with the devil can perform such acts. The Salem Witch Trials was much more than just America’s history, it’s also part of the history of women. The story of witchcraft is first and foremost the story of women. Especially in its western life, Karlsen (1989) noted that “witchcraft challenges us with ideas about women, with fears about women, with the place of women in society and with women themselves”. Witchcraft also confronts us too with violence against women. Even through some men were executed as witches during the witch hunts, the numbers were far less then women. Witches were generally thought to be women and most of those who were accused and executed for being witches were women. Why were women there so many women accused of witchcraft compared to men? Were woman accused of witchcraft because men thought it was a way to control these women? It all happened in 1692, in an era where women were expected to behave a certain way, and women were punished if they threatened what was considered the right way of life. The emphasis of this paper is the explanation of Salem proceedings in view of the role and the position of women in Colonial America.
The first accusers of those on trial for witchcraft were group of teenage girls. The first girl, Betty Parris, began to have painful contortions, fever, and what were most likely hallucinations. These symptoms may have been the result of ergot poisoning, the result of eating bread made with moldy rye, but at the time, no one knew that was possible. The family’s slave, Tituba, had come from Barbados and was knowledgeable in stories of voodoo and black magic. She shared these stories with Betty and her friends. After seeing the attention Betty was getting because of her behavior, her friends began to exhibit the same behavior. Because the local doctor knew of no medical explanation, he suggested the cause was supernatural. Tituba, with her knowledge of magic became the first person accused. She thought she could save her life by confessing and naming other women as her conspirators. Tituba’s accusations were unreliable because she was trying to do anything she could to save her life. Others were also accused by the girls. These women were generally unpopular or strange in some way, so it was easy for them to be targets of the girls accusations. For these girls, who were at the center of the town’s attention and perhaps had no real understanding of the seriousness of their accusati...
Often times in literature the body becomes a symbolic part of the story. The body may come to define the character, emphasize a certain motif of the story, or symbolize the author’s or society’s mindset. The representation of the body becomes significant for the story. In the representation of their body in the works of Marie de France’s lais “Lanval” and “Yonec,” the body is represented in opposing views. In “Lanval,” France clearly emphasizes the pure beauty of the body and the power the ideal beauty holds, which Lanval’s Fairy Queen portrays. In France’s “Yonec,” she diverts the reader’s attention from the image of the ideal body and emphasizes a body without a specific form and fluidity between the forms. “Yonec” focuses on a love not based on the body. Although the representations of the body contradict one another, France uses both representation to emphasize the private and, in a way, unearthly nature of love that cannot be contained by the human world. In both lais, the love shared between the protagonists is something that is required to be kept in private and goes beyond a single world into another world.
In The Golden Ass, Lucius draws a strong parallel between the stepmother’s story and that of Meroe, the evil, old witch who kills Socrates when he tries to escape her lustful affections. The stepmother is metaphorically likened to a witch because doing so comments on the danger of a weak-natured woman who holds a position of power. Although no magical evils, such as the spells that Meroe casts upon Socrates, manifest themselves in the story of the stepmother, the emphasis on the unnatural transformation in her disposition and the perverse and sinful nature of her wanton affections symbolize her witchlike nature. The similarity between the two stories helps to fortify the connection between witches and women in a position of power, which ultimately condemns the latter while simultaneously upholding male legacy.
During the early modern period Europe experienced a phase of vicious prosecution of the people accused of the crime of ‘Witchcraft.’ There has been an estimated death toll of up to 50,000 people during these Witch-hunt crazes, although the exact figures are unknown. What is known is that overall 75-80% of those accused were woman although this varies in different states. In this essay I will discuss the role of gender in witchcraft and why the majority of people executed as Witches were women.
What would you do if someone told you you would end up killing your father and marrying your mother when you grow up? You would do anything to keep that from happening, wouldn’t you? Oedipus did in Oedipus the King by Sophocles. Unfortunately, Oedipus fails in avoiding his fate. Faced with a choice between pursuing the truth which everyone tells him would lead to his destruction or accepting a life without knowing any better, Oedipus chooses self-knowledge over self-deception. This makes Oedipus a perfect example of a tragic hero. In Greek drama, a tragic hero is a protagonist of a noble birth who possesses a tragic flaw that leads to his down fall but shows the courage to accept responsibility for his own actions.
One way in which Medieval women were undermined and subjugated to men was by being painted as untrustworthy temptresses, and the lady in Laustic, the unnamed lover in Lanval, and the Queen in Lanval are all portrayed as temptresses. For instance, the lady in Laustic spends all night looking over at her lover. She cannot go to the castle next door to see her lover, so instead, all night “The lady, at her window, higher,/Speaks, and looks, only desire.” From this passage we can see the sexual undertones of the story, with lady looking with desire at her lover. Elsewhere it explains that “They had all they wanted, at their leisure,/Except coming together alone, you know,/And going as far as they'd like to go,” clearly indicating the overt sexual nature of the woman’s desire for her lover and his for her. Lanval’s unnamed lover is even more overtly sexual, appearing scantily clad. The first time we meet her, the story tells, “In just ...
On February 29, 1692, Tituba, Sarah Osborne, and Sarah Good were accused of The Devil’s Magic by the group of girls (Linder). Women were thought to have been more likely to be a witch, because women were considered lustful towards the Devil by nature (Blumberg). Tituba confes...
Witchcraft is the art or power of bringing magical or preternatural power to bear or the act or practice of attempting to do so. People who practice witchcraft are known as witches. Witchcraft along with other supernatural phenomena has become a big part of pop culture. Movies, television shows, and books such as the Harry Potter franchise, Charmed, The Wizard of Oz, and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch all contain witches. Witches have moved from something that was so feared that they prompted the infamous witch-hunts, to a source of entertainment and a popular Halloween costume. The belief in the practice of magic has been around for a long time. Witchcraft is an alternative belief system and although witches are no longer being burned at the stake, there is still a huge prejudice against witches. This paper will be an investigation into the exceptional witches of the past and present, important historical events and practices of witchcraft.
The study of witchcraft and its presence in the high middle ages of Europe and Central America is the fundamental significance in the understanding of mankind. It not only explores notions of theology, spirituality, social psychology, history of social protest but also highlights the issue that is the female position. This essay attempts to deal with the epidemic of Witch persecutions, how the phenomenon came about and to what degree and whom was it accepted. It will attempt to understand the context by which these measures were taken, and the societal pressure of the Catholic Church, the hand by which many woman and very few men were subject to emotional and physical torture and ultimately condemned to death.